V.S. Ramachandran

V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D. is
Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor of
Neurosciences and Psychology at the University of
California
,
San Diego
, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. Ramachandran trained
as a physician and obtained a medical degree from Stanley Medical College and
subsequently a doctorate from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge,
England.

Ramachandran's early research was on visual perception but he is best
known for his work in Neurology. He was recently elected a fellow of All Souls
College, Oxford, was awarded the John F. Streff Gold Medal from the Neurological
Rehabilitation Society of America, a Gold medal from the Australian National
University and the Ariens Kappers Medal from the Royal Nederlands Academy of
Sciences for distinguished contributions in neuroscience. In 1995 he gave the
Decade of the Brain Lecture at the 25th annual (Silver Jubilee) meeting of the
Society for Neuroscience and more recently the Inaugural keynote lecture at the
Decade of the Brain Conference held by NIMH and the Library of Congress, the
D.O.Hebb Lecture at McGill University, the Dorcas Cumming Plenary Lecture at
Cold Springs Harbor and the First Hans Lucas Teuber Lecture at MIT. Ramachandran
has published over 120 papers in scientific journals (including three invited
review articles in the Scientific American),
is Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of
Human Behaviour and author of the critically acclaimed book Phantoms
in the Brain. His work is featured frequently in the major newsmedia
and Newsweek magazine recently named him a member of "the century
club" - one of the hundred most prominent people to watch in the next
century.